So a couple of days ago, I decided to start android programming using Android studio. After installing the IDE I had some problems syncing Gradle (discussed here). Now I'm trying to use Android studio without Gradle. I've read some topics about using Ant etc. but I don't know which one is the easiest way to do that, And most of them weren't talking about Android studio.(note that I want to use Android studio and build/debug apps normally, just like someone who uses Gradle)
Gradle is the build system for Android. Android Studio uses it for all its builds. You can't build without using Gradle. There were alternative build systems years ago, but they stopped being supported almost a decade ago now. While it would be technically possible to build without gradle, you'd be doing months of work to get a basic build up and running because you'd have to rewrite EVERYTHING google's build does using the alternative system.
Basically you can spend a few days figuring out how to fix your gradle setup (which will almost certainly end up being trivial) or you can spend the next year writing a build system. Pick the first option.
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I am new to android development, So I am not sure if this question is very silly
I was wondering if the same source code can run in both eclipse and android studio
If this is possible how to do it, and what points should be considered?
If not what are the road blocks to accomplish this.
Simple answer: Yes, you can "write" (not run) in both IDE's.
Aside: You really don't even need an IDE. If using Gradle, you can write code using any text-editor, then compile, build, test, and install all using Gradle.
If this is possible how to do it?
Well, Android Studio can import Eclipse projects. That is pretty well documented.
Eclipse (unofficially) has an Andmore project and also supports Gradle projects.
what are the road blocks to accomplish this
If using Eclipse, it's not supported by the Android team anymore, and you'll likely be missing out on features that are actively added to Android Studio.
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I used to be an Android developer for 2 years, but over 2 years ago. I believe that things changed - we have Android Studio, Gradle and probably more tools that I'm not aware of right now.
What is the current development stack for creating Android applications? What tools should we used right now?
I used to use eclipse with ant, but as far as I can see, a lot of people are using AS with Gradle, which is, for my first experience, extremely slow.
How to jump back into Android development after some time of not being up to date with development stack?
Eclipse vs Android Studio is a matter of choice. You can get used to it within hours, or you can continue with Eclipse. I am using both tools for different projects.
Android Studio seemed to be more stabile at some points.
Update on Android SDK and third party libraries are more easily handled with Android Studio.
Android Studio has not NDK support yet. You have to compile native codes outside of Android Studio. Edit:(Well, actually it has support but claimed to be deprecated, probably developers are working on a better solution)
Edit2:(It will be soon officially supported with C/C++ debugger)
With Android Studio you can use java7 syntax, but you have to stick with java6 syntax on Eclipse. Edit:(you can now force java8 with a plugin on A.S and I guess java7 is usable on eclipse too) Edit2:(java7 is a must now for both parties, but still java8 syntax can only be used in A.S with a help of plugin)
Google releases example codes compatible with Android Studio saying eclipse versions will be available soon.
Android Studio has better GUI designer.
Android Studio has better refactoring capabilities.
The most important change is SDK itself, actually. Just check if Android Studio is good enough for you and study on SDK.
It depends on your project. For non critical or hobby projects you should definitely start with AS and Gradle right away because this the the future of Android development. Although it is still in 'beta' and it can break some stuff after a new upgrade, it has many new features which make you more productive and happier in development.
If you have a critical project and you don't want to spend your time with checking and fixing things your are not supposed to fix, you should stick back to Eclipse, at least until AS is released.
Independently on whether you use AS or Eclipse, you should already start learning and using Gradle. It works perfectly for both options. If you hesitate you can even keep Ant and Gradle building your project in parallel. They work together and don't overlap.
I have been using Android Studio the last year and I can say that it is a very powerful tool, that I believe, in the next year, will overcome Eclipse.
When AS was still in version 4.+ Alpha, there were some issues (mostly with external libraries .jar) but since beta was released and up until now almost every bug was fixed.
Moreover, AS is better when it comes to indexing and suggestions. You will be surprised by its suggestion system, which helps you save a lot of time when coding.
I still use eclipse for other projects, but I believe for Android Development AS is the tool you should invest in, if not for now, definitely for the future.
We are using both, Android Studio and the good old Eclipse IDE. We noticed, that it basically depends on what you're doing. Android Studio is good enough for developing from now and it will replace Eclipse soon. However, it has some drawbacks where Eclipse is your choice. A small comparison was made by Google themselves: https://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html
Eclipse: Eclipse is very stable and works perfectly with ant driven builds. However, if you want to use gradle, there's some work to do to get the build process working with eclipse. We tried to use Eclipse with Gradle but the Gradle Plugin was quite buggy at this time. If you want to use native C code, you must use Eclipse, as Android Studio does not support that, yet.
Android Studio: Looks great and does also a very good job. The gradle integration works much better there. This is a big advantage over Eclipse when you have to deal with many dependencies. This is probably not an issue for small projects. But, if you're developing projects with additional libraries or frameworks you should definitely give Gradle a try. I hope, that the NDK support is coming soon, so that we can switch to AS completely. Ant builds are someway out-dated.
First of all, I will not debate about Android Studio vs Eclipse as it's an opinion based discussion and a kind of a troll...
The Android development basically the same : the base tools still ADB, Android SDK, Java language... So you can continue to use a "notepad" and compile, build and deploy by the SDK tools.
However, like in every development project, you could choose your upper level tools. Your question is about IDE and building system. This is only a matter of choice.
Android Studio and Gradle are still in beta phase for Android developments and you could use them only if you keep this in mind. You could continue to use Eclipse and Maven or switch to Android Studio and Gradle or keep using Eclipse but moving from Maven to Gradle... just make what you prefer.
The Android development stack evolved this way :
Basics tools : Text editor, SDK tools
First IDE : Eclipse with ADT plugin (can run your program from an IDE)
Industrialisation phase : Eclipse ADT + Maven (dependencies management, building process management...)
Coming phase : Android Studio (IntelliJ based) + Gradle (you can compare Gradle to Maven, but this is another discussion)
I think that other answers will give you personnal points of view about Eclipse vs Android Studio, Maven vs Gradle, etc... which is a really personnal choice ;)
My development stack for Android :
IntelliJ 14
Maven
Android SDK
plus my own OSS Framework to ease the pain of Android for a Java EE developer
Reasons:
IntelliJ is the best available IDE imo
Maven is pretty mature
The plugin has become useable
The workspace integration Maven -> IntelliJ is working great (both, using maven builds and deriving IDE builds from maven)
If Android Studio (which is in great parts IntelliJ) has become slow, it come due to the gradle stuff. I had a large scale project based on gradle and made these experiences :
Slow, Slower, gradle (up to 2GB memor consumption for building an app)
Xml is horrible, but gradle dsl is imo even worse
Switching to gradle 2.1 broke the predicate logic (e.g. formerly working project.hasProperty("foo") && property.ext.foo.equals("bar") does not work any more, this must not happen during a MINOR release
Compared with maven's xml hell, gradle leaves a callow, unmature impression on me, especially building with gradle is hell of a slow job compared with maven.
But - and this is my true oppionion - if gradle is pushed by google and gradleware, it definitely has the potential to become the next generation building tool, although I doubt that the flexibility in gradle will ever lead to a proper IDE workspace build derivation. From my point of view, the choice for gradle over maven done by google happened in a too early state.
just my two cents.
PS: Try tuning the memory settings. Give more memory to IDEA (e.g. 2GB in a 64bit enviroment). My experience with IntelliJ is, that the default mem settings are too small. You can find it in $InstallDir/bin/idea.exe.vmoptions resp. $InstallDir/bin/idea64.exe.vmoptions
EDIT: This is not intended to be gradle bashing. Gradle has large potentials indeed. This post reflects my experiences during my last project basing on gradle (non-Android). For beginners gradle might be the better choice since it is a lot easier than maven.
So I plan on building for Android with cocos2d-x 3.0rc2 and there isn't a whole lot of updated documentation on what all I'm supposed to do to get up and running. I have the whole environment set up already. I can run tests and make some basic sprites just by editing the C++ files in Notepad++, however I need to get to a point where I am actually set up in an IDE. There are tutorials of importing projects into ADT, which I have gotten to run but I cannot edit the *.cpp files from inside eclipse. Is that how I'm supposed to set up my environment? Do people usually just edit in a basic text editor and run from command line or is there something I'm missing.
I also opened up the Visual Studio solution that comes with a new project and inside that I have auto completion and it's a nice environment, but there is still the hassle with makefiles that I just can't get working. I tried using some of the extended features and using CocoStudio exports in my projects and the compiler won't have any of that. Is there just a lack of documentation for people who are not comfortable developing for Android already?
When I make a new class, or use a new include, do I have to manually add that that to a makefile? If so, where is somewhere that I can learn how that process works and be able to apply it to new situations?
I feel lost because I'm not too used to getting into all the 'nitty-gritty' bits of development.
If someone wants to help me out understanding all this, I would be immensely appreciative.
Thanks,
Vynlar
Visual Studio 2012 is supported. Here is documentation on setting up Cocos2d-x v3.0 with Visual Studio: http://cocos2d-x.org/wiki/How_to_run_cpp-tests_on_Windows
This question is like two years old, but if anyone hits it in search results there is now a Visual Studio project to target Android devices with Cocos2d-x. It's not integrated with the cocos template system, so it currently needs to be updated per cocos version. Currently it's for VS 2015 Update 3 and Cocos 3.12.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2016/07/12/cocos2d-x-visual-studio-android-project/
I was the developer on this, so I can be contacted with any questions.
I have a project in Android Studio which has two libraries linked. The Google Downloader and the Licencing library. Every time I want to run the app on a device it takes more than to 1 minute.
I have a gut feeling that the libraries are compiled every time, even if I haven't changed it.
Can anyone confirm this? And if it is so, is there anything I can do to speed up the process?
Found another thread which describes the same issue. I might update Gradle etc.
Building and running app via Gradle and Android Studio is slower than via Eclipse
I am using Xamarin Studio with Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android. My workspace contains two solutions, one for android, another for ios. Projects are pretty much the same. When I build the solution for ios, it rebuilds only changed projects. It does some additional operations which take really little time. So pressing Build second time takes virtually no time.
But when I build the Android solution, it rebuilds all projects regardless of changes in files, configuration and so on. If I press Build after successful build, it rebuilds it all over again. Even worse, if I try to Run a just built project, it rebuilds it! Furthermore, if I run the project after run (when you debug a program, it happens often), it rebuilds it again. As I have many projects, it takes really long time, plus the compilation is very CPU-dependant, so improving speed is hard.
Generally, the question is if it is possible not to rebuild entire solution upon every build? Maybe there is a configuration option I am missing, or something is misconfigured?
I don't know if anything in projects configuration is relevant to the question, so please tell me what part of solution/projects configuration may help.
Versions:
Xamarin Studio
Version 4.0.9 (build 12)
Xamarin.Android
Version: 4.7.11 (Business Edition)
//I thought that separate compilation nowadays is a must in every serious compiler, so I assume, I have done something wrong.
UPD:
I have installed latest versions of Xamarin Studio and Xamarin.Android:
Xamarin Studio
Version 4.0.12 (build 3)
Xamarin.Android
Version: 4.8.1 (Business Edition)
It takes 1 minute 58 seconds to rebuild the android solution. Every time when I run the application.
Honestly, this sounds like a bug in Xamarin Studio or the xbuild build tool, at least, assuming you don't have any custom build steps (which you probably don't)? Could you file a bug report on https://bugzilla.xamarin.com? Thanks! It really shouldn't rebuild the project each time.
I'm really happy to hear that your iOS project doesn't rebuild, though, because I'm the maintainer of the iOS build code :-)
I would think the reason for complete rebuild, when you want to run is because an APK file is not generated when just rebuilding. It is first generated when wanting to either deploy or run the project.
It's not a bug, I have the same features, and I have wasted lost of time waiting for each run in debug mode. I think using Xamarin has cost me 10x more time than using any other development environnement cause of tons of problems like this...
It's an unprofessional tool.